Based in the town of Mikkeli in the south-east of Finland, the rally took place over generally fast gravel roads. A total of seven stages, only one of which was repeated, were held across Saturday to form a competitive distance of 106.27 kilometres.

The rally gave the three drivers (all in Renault Clio Rally4 cars) the chance to build upon their strong performance in the non-championship Varaosaexpert Ralli in Lahti two weeks earlier, and confirm the progress made since their Finnish championship debuts at the Pohjanmaa Ralli in June.

Yuki Yamamoto made a great start to the rally, going fourth-fastest in the SM4 class on the opening stage. However, he and co-driver Miika Teiskonen were soon forced to retire in SS3 due to a fuel pump issue.

Otake, co-driven by Marko Salminen, capitalised on incidents for several of his rivals to climb up into third place after four stages. He continued his consistent driving and pace in the final loop of three stages to secure a podium finish, 20 seconds ahead of his nearest competitor.

Hikaru Kogure was hampered at the beginning of the rally by a braking issue, but once this was fixed in service he bounced back to set fourth-fastest time in SS3 and climb up to sixth overall in the class together with co-driver Topi Luhtinen.

Quotes:
Hikaru Kogure:“On this rally I could find an improvement in performance from Pohjanmaa, which was good, but to be honest I am not completely satisfied with the speed compared to my team-mates. We had a brake issue in the morning and lost a lot of time, but after that I still felt we were quite slow. The stages were fast but also twisty even though the speed was high, and in the recce I found it difficult to judge the bend numbers for the pacenotes, which affected my speed in the rally. But at least we could finish the rally without any big moments and gain experience and data for the future.”

Nao Otake:“I’m so happy with this result. In the morning the pace was not so good but it was getting better during the rally. There were many things I could try and I was able to find a good rhythm, which was nice. The biggest challenge on this rally was to only drive each stage twice in recce, rather than four times like in Lahti. But my pacenotes were quite OK: I could trust them and myself. Of course I made some mistakes and I learned a lot from those, and this rally will be good experience for me.”

Yuki Yamamoto:“Our rally was going well until we had the problem. Of course, some of the Finnish drivers were quicker than us but I think I was driving on my level and the same as what I could do in testing, so that was good. It was disappointing to have to retire but I know that it’s part of the game sometimes. We missed out on the experience from the rest of the rally, but I have some positive things to take from the stages we did and also some less positive things that I can improve on for the future. So I can keep my head up and try to focus on the next rally.”

Mikko Hirvonen (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WRC Challenge Program chief instructor):“This was again a good rally overall. It was unfortunate that Yuki had the technical issue early in the rally, because he started very strongly and it would have been exciting to see if he could have kept that speed consistently through the race. Hikaru also had some issues at the beginning but after that he was able to find good speed. Nao did really well and being consistent allowed him to finish third, which is a fantastic result. The stages were really challenging and fast with a lot of high-speed corners where you needed to have good confidence in your notes. After Lahti where they were able to drive each stage four times in the recce, it was interesting to see if they can still trust their notes after only two passes, and they did pretty well. They were able to have good speed, they didn’t make any big mistakes and they learned more about what they need from their notes in order to be more confident. So this rally was another good step.”